[blog] churros are fried until they become crunchy, and may be sprinkled with sugar

Fast pace side-scroller game with 3D graphics.

Controls pretty smoothly, dodging, double jumping, using the grappling hook, wall-running, all somehow feel second nature. I love the moments of platforming, but unfortunately the gameplay it's more focused on shooting. However, there is good weapons variety and powerups.

Beating it felt pretty easy, mainly because of how powerful you become and how generous the life bar is. Not really a downside, a power fantasy game once in a while can be really fun.

The downside of the game, which is a big one, it's how long/recycled the levels are. It takes too long until you reach a different scenario and set of enemies.

Result: completed (3h 20m)

Rating: 7/10

Pros:
+ loadout variety
+ good platforming
+ fluid controls
+ bite-sized levels

Cons:
- repetitive levels
- bland music
- bland visual design

Screenshots:


Pew pew.


A pretty fun flappy bird level.


What's with the soda thing?

Looks like Symphony of the Night? I'm playing it.

Fortunately, it's not too bad. The art is well done, the music was good enough to not mute it (which unfortunately I'm getting doing with most games nowadays) and most importantly, it controls great. Level design is serviceable.

Unfortunately, I found the very end of the game pretty bad. Corridors of damage sponges enemies and the last boss fight is just a collection of all the bosses of the game in a row, which takes way too long.

Retiring a game at the last boss fight never feels good, but it was painful to beat 8 or so boss in a row to make a stupid mistake on the 9th one, and have to replay it all over again. No, thank you.

Oh, and the dialogs are super confusing, I think the game assumes that you watched an entire anime series of this or something of sorts.

Result: retired

Rating: 7/10

Pros:
+ pretty pixel art
+ controls well
+ engaging fire and wind attack modes

Cons:
- button mashing on bosses
- stage 6
- no story explanation

Screenshots:


Pretty pixel art.


Boss fight.


Not your usual punching bag.

This game is a huge improvement from OlliOlli 2. They went from no character customization to one of the coolest in my recent memory. The soundtrack is finally pleasant to hear. The level design is fun. The scenarios are lively with a great sense of style.

It kills me to say, but I ended up retiring it just as with the other games. It also suffers from a sharp difficulty spike at the end. I went from feeling like a skate god to a skate nobody in a matter of few levels.

Result: retired

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ good ost
+ fun character customization
+ perfect controls
+ great art style
+ creative level design

Cons:
- some dialogs are too long
- hard to understand challenges
- sharp difficulty spike at the end

Screenshots:


It's all about reaching Gnarvana.


Wallriding feels so good.


What a lovely artstyle.

I'm checking out some Steam Next Fest demos are usual.


Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed: I didn't play the first game yet, but it played exactly how I've expected. Nothing to write home about, but it was fun. Framerate could be better though.


LEGO Brawls: A Lego smash bros that don't look or feel great.


Anger Foot: A foot theme fast-paced shooter. Everyone dies with a single hit and the game requires very quick reactions from you. Reminded me a lot of High Hell. I was having a blast, except for the levels in which the framerate dropped so badly that was almost unplayable.


Fech The Ferret: What do I do? Where do I go?


UNDETECTED: A Metal Gear Solid-inspired game. Such a shame that it didn't gel with me, looked so promising.


Sycamore: A terrible to control platformer and I hate its camera.


Spark the Electric Jester 3: This game tricked me, it started as a racing game, but then it becomes a 3D Sonic clone. Too bad I hate Sonic games, it seems well-made enough.


NAIAD: It's a mix of a relaxing app with an easy puzzle game. The art style it's incredibly (you got to see in movement, screenshots don't do justice), but I just wasn't in the mood for it (found it boring). It would make a great Game Pass game though (fingers crossed).


Agent 64: Spies Never Die: If the 64 on the name doesn't already tell you, this is an homage to Goldeneye 64. I was in love with this game until I got stuck because I wasn't able to find some keycard.


GigaSword: The highlight of the demos. It can be slow for a side scroller platform, but I loved what I've played. Not too hard combat and not too hard puzzles, but still engaging enough. I can see myself playing hours of this game in one sitting (maybe beating it if it's short) once it's released.

Only very recently I've watched the Terminator movies, talk about being late to the party!

On the 1 vs 2 debate, the second movie is pretty good, but you guys are crazy, 1 is hands down the masterpiece of this series. 3 is passable, barely. As for the other not numbered movies, I literally didn't bother watching them to the end (I've 'retired' them to use the website terminology).

Since the story is fresh on my mind, I've decided to play Terminator: Resistance. It has mostly negative critic reviews and positive user ones.

For the negative, it's pretty easy to spot. I didn't face anything game-breaking, but the game feels low-budget. Lack of impact on the guns, stiff NPC faces, the short music loop, and a lot of recycled assets.

As for the positive, it seems a labor of love despite its shortcomings. Terminators are well modeled and running away from them when you are first underpowered was really fun. The NPC side stories are surprisingly interesting (despite their quests being boring fetch quests).

I think the first half of the game worked much better than the second. At first, the game felt somewhat challenging (you die with very few hits) and scarce on resources. In the second half, it was a cakewalk after unlocking most of the skills and having almost infinite resources. If I knew this at first, I would play this game on hard difficulty instead of on normal, at the end I was playing careless and that was not fun.

Despite the unbalanced ending, I had some genuinely memorable moments at the beginning of the game. My first encounter with a Terminator in a hallway was terrifying!

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ challenging beginning
+ useful skills
+ great first encounter with terminator
+ good balance between combat and stealth
+ interesting npc backstories

Cons:
- repetitive music
- bad conversation animation
- too easy on normal
- shooting lacks impact
- invisible walls
- boring npc quests

Screenshots:


Talk to the hand.


We always have some room for another John Connor.


The hacking mini-game is Frogger, which was creative.

It's more Cuphead, 10/10. No, seriously, Cuphead is one of my favorite games of all time, and this DLC is precisely what I wanted, more Cuphead. Amazing art style, music, gameplay. it's kinda boring to keep praising this game, I find it so perfect.

The addition of Ms. Chalice was nice, she plays differently than the other characters, one extra heart and can double jump. I think it's an attempt to make the game slightly easier (just slightly). I've used Cuphead anyway for all the DLC because I'm stubborn.

I've beaten most of the stages without too much trouble, muscle memory is there. However, my stubbornness bit me at the last boss. I've literally spent hours trying to beating it without varying my playstyle.

I finally gave up and decide to change my gun, for the Chaser (homing projectiles, no need to aim). I beat it on the first try. The last boss was a bitter-sweet victory, changing the gun making it so much easier felt a little unbalanced.

Result: completed

Rating: 10/10

Screenshots:


Let's bake a wondertart.


Even the credits is charming

Played for 10 minutes. A cat walking simulator?

Not a fair opinion after playing it for 15 minutes but, for a cat roleplay, all my expectation was to freely... JUMP! What a disappointment.

Result: retired

Screenshots:


Cat game.


Yup, cat game.

I don't know if you live on São Paulo like me, but have you visited BIG (Brazilian Indie Game) Festival 2022? It was 9th and 10th of July.

I feel that it was your type of thing! You would love it! A lot of cool stuff there :)

Also, a lot of retired games recently, huh

I don't know if you live on São Paulo like me, but have you visited BIG (Brazilian Indie Game) Festival 2022? It was 9th and 10th of July.

I feel that it was your type of thing! You would love it! A lot of cool stuff there :)

Also, a lot of retired games recently, huh

I've lived for many years in Belo Horizonte (MG) but, now after the pandemic, I'm living in a small town (perks of remote work). I always wanted to go to BGS, but not enough to travel that far I guess.

Did you attend BIG? Did you enjoy it? This presentation felt kinda heroic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTj60CWhQo
(see 3:30, the guy shifts the title from "The future of game design" to "Why NFT is a nightmare" in this crypto-sponsored event haha)

As for the retirements, you are not wrong, a lot of it this year from me. However, making up for it, below is a game that no one else will complete!

On paper this game could be good: Platinum games combat, unique Tower of Babel setting, unique oil painting art style. In reality, it's just not good.

The level design is dull, it's all mindlessly dungeon crawling. The live service stuff is ridiculously expensive (but I didn't care so much). The cutscenes are static images, very low budget.

The enemy design is a mixed bag. A lot of uninteresting moves, some of them were unnecessary bullet sponges, but a few bosses were genuine fun and exciting. Jumping in the game is floaty, but not in a bad way. There is very little platforming in the dungeons, I wish they use it better, had potential

The combat is fine, which is a letdown considering it's a Platinum game. You carry two 'actual' weapons (one for light and another for strong attack), and four 'spirit' weapons attached to the shoulder buttons. Button mashing six buttons at a time felt... interesting. Timing dodges always felt good. No stellar idea here as with other Platinum games such as Vanquish or Metal Gear Rising. Combat is OK and forgettable.

The hate this game got was a bit unfair, it isn't great but it's not the terrible mess as some reviews say, it's just incredibly uninspired. Oh, and one underrated aspect about it: the music. The opera singing felt very unique and atmospheric.

Result: completed

Rating: 7/10

Pros:
+ responsive controls
+ satisfying dodge
+ good music
+ interesting Babylon setting
+ jumping

Cons:
- live service game structure
- boring level design
- grindy
- ugly graphics

Screenshots:


Sometimes the oil painting effect does work well.


It's a Platinum game alright.


The Tower of Babel theme is interesting on paper, but unfortunately underdeveloped.

I see you have The Medium on your list! I played that on stream back at launch and that was an interesting experience. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you're a fan of Silent Hill because it carries that kind of vibe but with the art style of Zdzisław Beksiński.

Edit - Disregard that, I see you made a post about it here. Definitely agree that the controls do feel a little stiff, but aesthetically it was a really cool game.

I've lived for many years in Belo Horizonte (MG) but, now after the pandemic, I'm living in a small town (perks of remote work). I always wanted to go to BGS, but not enough to travel that far I guess.

Did you attend BIG? Did you enjoy it? This presentation felt kinda heroic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTj60CWhQo
(see 3:30, the guy shifts the title from "The future of game design" to "Why NFT is a nightmare" in this crypto-sponsored event haha)

As for the retirements, you are not wrong, a lot of it this year from me. However, making up for it, below is a game that no one else will complete!

That's nice! Smaller towns usually have such a different pace in life, isn't? Must be great living there.

I can't say if BIG or BGS is worth for you to travel some hours, but is definitely fun if you're really into games in general - especially BIG for me as you get know and talk to brazilian indie developers and play their games.

Having said that, I did attend this year and it was great! At least in the gaming part of the event.

They had some notebooks which played some indies that were participating in the BIG "award" - like Greak, Dodgeball Academia, recently Gamedec and such. You could only play for 15 minutes, but if there wasn't anyone on the line and no one watching you, you could just ALT+TAB and play the games on Steam :P

There was the indie stands where independent studios (or a single person lol) had paid to be there and a couple of games made by students. It had some great games.

From the top of my mind, Astrea: Six-faced Oracle (idk if it's spelled this way), Undergrave, Bloodless and Candle Prick were the ones I enjoyed the most.

Astrea is essentially a slay the spire clone using dices instead of cards with a really beautiful art.

Undergrave is a tactical roguelike which tries to blend into the breach and dark souls aesthetic with both punishing difficulty - made by a single person!

Bloodless is a black and white game were you are a samurai which defeats enemies without its sword - only dashing towards enemies to give "damage" to them.

And Candle Prick is an awesome puzzle game which is kinda hard to describe, but it's really clever and makes you think hard to solve some levels. Also, surprisingly made by students.

Anyways, I typed a lot already haha
I haven't been in any presentation though - as they were mostly full always when I went there :(
If I knew it was going to be that amusing like your video, I would have tried more to be there!

Now, about the next game, that was unexpected! Never once I have seen someone comment about it outside of the trailer before PS5 :O
It's worth at least 10 games haha

I see you have The Medium on your list! I played that on stream back at launch and that was an interesting experience. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you're a fan of Silent Hill because it carries that kind of vibe but with the art style of Zdzisław Beksiński.

Edit - Disregard that, I see you made a post about it here. Definitely agree that the controls do feel a little stiff, but aesthetically it was a really cool game.

Yes, The Medium was kinda cool. I normally don't have the patience to beat a game that is not focused on gameplay, but The Medium was interesting enough to make me play it all.

There are a lot of rumors of Bloober Team (The Medium devs) developing a new actual Silent Hill game. I never played a Silent Hill game myself, I wonder how it aged and if it's worth trying it out without the nostalgia factor...

That's nice! Smaller towns usually have such a different pace in life, isn't? Must be great living there.

I can't say if BIG or BGS is worth for you to travel some hours, but is definitely fun if you're really into games in general - especially BIG for me as you get know and talk to brazilian indie developers and play their games.

Having said that, I did attend this year and it was great! At least in the gaming part of the event.

They had some notebooks which played some indies that were participating in the BIG "award" - like Greak, Dodgeball Academia, recently Gamedec and such. You could only play for 15 minutes, but if there wasn't anyone on the line and no one watching you, you could just ALT+TAB and play the games on Steam :P

There was the indie stands where independent studios (or a single person lol) had paid to be there and a couple of games made by students. It had some great games.

From the top of my mind, Astrea: Six-faced Oracle (idk if it's spelled this way), Undergrave, Bloodless and Candle Prick were the ones I enjoyed the most.

Astrea is essentially a slay the spire clone using dices instead of cards with a really beautiful art.

Undergrave is a tactical roguelike which tries to blend into the breach and dark souls aesthetic with both punishing difficulty - made by a single person!

Bloodless is a black and white game were you are a samurai which defeats enemies without its sword - only dashing towards enemies to give "damage" to them.

And Candle Prick is an awesome puzzle game which is kinda hard to describe, but it's really clever and makes you think hard to solve some levels. Also, surprisingly made by students.

Anyways, I typed a lot already haha
I haven't been in any presentation though - as they were mostly full always when I went there :(
If I knew it was going to be that amusing like your video, I would have tried more to be there!

Now, about the next game, that was unexpected! Never once I have seen someone comment about it outside of the trailer before PS5 :O
It's worth at least 10 games haha

Thank you for the kind reply!

Brazilian indie devs are being really prolific those days uh. Bloodless looks like a game 'for me', hope it ends up being good. A Brazilian indie from last year that I absolutely loved was Super Mombo Quest by the way.

Té mais ;)

Yes, The Medium was kinda cool. I normally don't have the patience to beat a game that is not focused on gameplay, but The Medium was interesting enough to make me play it all.

There are a lot of rumors of Bloober Team (The Medium devs) developing a new actual Silent Hill game. I never played a Silent Hill game myself, I wonder how it aged and if it's worth trying it out without the nostalgia factor...

A couple years ago I fired up Silent Hill 2, it's definitely aged pretty hard but it maintains a pretty eerie feel to it which is kind of impressive considering at this point it's probably about 20 years old. If you're not really bothered by jacked up controls and forced camera angles of the early 00s I'd say go for it, but without the rose tinted glasses you might not care as much for it.

If there was a team to "take the torch" for Silent Hill I think Bloober would be the team to do it personally. I think the Medium is the closest spiritual successor to Silent Hill in modern gaming. It's doubtful Konami will let their grubby mitts off of it though which is super unfortunate since they've done nothing with the IP for years.

Big Apple, 3 AM.

I have fond memories from my childhood of this game, but I didn't own the cartridge and never really beat it. Now I'm an adult, time to fix that.

The pixel art is awesome, colorful without being too cartoony, and the characters' designs are edgy without getting too tacky. The move set is simple, but effective, throwing enemies at the screen never gets old!



The OST is awesome, it's incredibly uplifting (I wonder what's the BPM) and immediately puts you in the mood for kicking and punching. The boss fight is one of the most memorable SNES tunes ever in my opinion.



Result: completed (39m)

Rating: 9/10

Pros:
+ great ost
+ great pixel art
+ creative stage themes
+ awesome boss fight music
+ controls well
+ perfect length

Cons:
- uneven boss fights
- bad default options

Screensho... err, I mean pictures:


I love my CRT TV.


I want to play F-Zero now.


The ending on normal just says "go play hard mode now", not nice.

Playing TMNT IV on my actual SNES was the first game I've beaten on my new humble retro gaming room! Below are some pictures of it.


Mega Drive (Genesis), N64, SNES, PS3, Dreamcast, and Wii, hooked up and ready to play.


Shelf with some nerdy stuff.


Happy meal Nintendo toys.


My old couch.


Gaming stuff on the wall.


Gaming stuff on the floor.

Fond memories of playing Turtles in Time with my dad. I don't think we ever played hard mode. Your gaming room looks great!

A well-made underrated platformer with a fun grappling hook gimmick.

At first, I thought the grappling hook would be too complicated and require me to play with analog sticks, but fortunately, it ended up being easy enough to play with a d-pad. The game has a lot of stuff to do if you are a completionist, fun collectibles, bonus levels, and quite challenging levels at the end.

The music is not entirely bad, but too repetitive, I ended up turning it off at the beginning of the game. The sound design is nice, the sound effect of getting an orange never irritated me (and it's 250 per level!)

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ controls well
+ fun gimmick
+ good collectibles
+ great sound effects
+ challenging end levels

Cons:
- jagged lines
- repetitive music

Screenshots:


Evil robots.


Grab all the oranges.


Grab all the gems.

A pretty generic Metroidvania that has serviceable combat, but nothing else to hold your attention. Everything feels and looks incredibly generic and exploring the world became a chore.

Result: retired

Rating: 6/10

Pros:
+ controls well
+ good control scheme

Cons:
- uninspiring world
- boring music
- generic presentation
- generic art style

Screenshots:


Some unicorn girl.


I can't decide if this is a stupid or awesome name.


I got hunted by the judge who swallowed fire.

The combat is the star of the show. It's simple, but very well tuned. Every fight felt balanced and engaging enough. it has rolling with iframes, but thankfully it's not mindlessly trying to be souls-like (no stamina bar, no recovery of currency on death, etc).

The visuals were pretty good, the diorama look reminded me of Tunic. The music was ok but not as good as the visuals I'd say.

While I had a good time with it, I didn't find myself compelled to explore the world and go off the beaten path, I ended up beating it without any health upgrades. The level design at some parts were easy to get lost within it, but not in a good way.

The existentialism theme and death portrayal of the story was charming and it's probably the most memorable thing about the game.

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ great combat
+ interesting boss designs
+ simple controls
+ memorable story themes

Cons:
- unrewarding exploration
- easy to get lost

Screenshots:


Diorama look.


A castle as a boss fight was very unique.


Elder crow.

The combat is the star of the show. It's simple, but very well tuned. Every fight felt balanced and engaging enough. it has rolling with iframes, but thankfully it's not mindlessly trying to be souls-like (no stamina bar, no recovery of currency on death, etc).

The visuals were pretty good, the diorama look reminded me of Tunic. The music was ok but not as good as the visuals I'd say.

While I had a good time with it, I didn't find myself compelled to explore the world and go off the beaten path, I ended up beating it without any health upgrades. The level design at some parts were easy to get lost within it, but not in a good way.

The existentialism theme and death portrayal of the story was charming and it's probably the most memorable thing about the game.

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ great combat
+ interesting boss designs
+ simple controls
+ memorable story themes

Cons:
- unrewarding exploration
- easy to get lost

Screenshots:


Diorama look.


A castle as a boss fight was very unique.


Elder crow.

Little fun fact for you. The game Titan Souls actually falls within the same universe as this game.

I absolutely love the designs of this, and I intend to play through this one day... one day... haha. Regardless, it looks like a load of fun. Shame to hear about the cons for exploring and the ease of getting lost, but simply reading about it is definitely keeping this game on my backlog list.

Little fun fact for you. The game Titan Souls actually falls within the same universe as this game.

I absolutely love the designs of this, and I intend to play through this one day... one day... haha. Regardless, it looks like a load of fun. Shame to hear about the cons for exploring and the ease of getting lost, but simply reading about it is definitely keeping this game on my backlog list.

Titan Souls is on my backlog, one day...

Sure thing, do play the game in the future, they nailed the most important thing: the combat is spot on.

Titan Souls is on my backlog, one day...

Sure thing, do play the game in the future, they nailed the most important thing: the combat is spot on.

Titan Souls is very much like Shadow of the Colossus, but pixellated and significantly shorter. A good time though!

A surprisingly fun budget souls-like from an indie dev.

You can see the 'budget' side of it in the enemy variety and the level design. It's not bad, but it could use more inspiration.

The combat is the star of the show, it's fast-paced and combines two kinds of attacks, one to wound and another to actually deal the damage. That encourages you to play aggressively (wounds heal over time). Making such fast and engaging combat was a stellar decision, I'm tired of indie devs producing 'clunky' souls-likes.

You can see the Bloodborne inspiration not only on the combat but on the lore as well, a lot of blood and infection references (but I confess I didn't read most of the notes I've found).

Result: completed (9h)

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ great combat
+ responsive controls
+ good bosses
+ fast-paced

Cons:
- boring level design
- reused scenarios
- poor enemy variety

Screenshots:


Demon's Souls vibes.


I think I've seen you before on some metal band album cover.


Take that.